Everybody knows that
tobacco leaves contain nicotine, but why?
Wild tobacco, is essentially a weed. As such, it is accustomed to growing in soils and environments that are not the best for other plants for varied reasons. Insects are one of those reasons.
Tobacco plants actually produce nicotine to kill bugs. Thats right. You are addicted to insecticide.
Insects that consume tobacco leaves are poisoned in several different ways. First, they are exposed to high levels of
heavy metals. Tobacco plants
leach all they can from poor soils and as such pick up all kinds of
minerals.
Heavy metals are known to damage
nerves. Secondly, they consume a
potent stimulant, nicotine, that acts to
suffocate them by over stimulating their nervous systems. It acts like
strychnine, a bitter
poisonous alkaloid (C21H22N2O2) does in
rat poison. If a bug can't breathe, it can't eat you.
Ingenious.
Eating
tobacco can have a similar effect on humans. Hundreds of years of
selective breeding have made the nicotine levels in
tobacco skyrocket. If you eat the entire contents of a pack of
cigarettes (don't), you can potentially
die in the same manner as a poor bug.
Suffocation.